They Held Her Funeral While She Was Still Alive. Then They Sealed the Door
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Medieval Europe produced a form of religious life in which a person was permanently enclosed in a small cell attached to a church, and the enclosure ceremony was a burial service.
What the life involved
A person seeking this life was enclosed in a cell built against the wall of a church, usually a single room of a few metres square, and undertook never to leave it again. The door was symbolically sealed and in some cases physically blocked. A small window opened into the church so the occupant could see the altar and receive communion. Another opened onto the street or churchyard for food, waste and conversation. A servant living nearby handled practical needs. The commitment was for life and breaking it was treated as a serious offence.
How somebody entered it
The process was formal and deliberately final:
- •A petition to the bishop, who assessed the applicant's seriousness
- •Proof of a secure income, since the person could not work
- •A period of testing to check the vocation was genuine
- •A ceremony drawing on the office for the dead
- •In some rites, dust scattered as at a graveside
- •The door then closed, and in places bricked up
Why anybody wanted it
The appeal makes more sense once the alternatives are understood. A monastery involved obedience, administration, communal obligation and travel, none of which suited somebody wanting undistracted prayer. This arrangement offered solitude without the dangers of a remote hermitage, safety within a settlement, and a guaranteed place in a society with few options for an unmarried woman of means. It also carried enormous prestige, since the occupant was regarded as a spiritual resource for the whole parish, and townspeople came to the street window for advice in numbers that some occupants found intrusive.
How common it was
The numbers are larger than the obscurity of the practice suggests and they are reasonably well established from bishops' records. England had several hundred such cells in use across the medieval period, with the practice peaking in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and towns of moderate size frequently supported one or two. The great majority of occupants were women, which is a striking imbalance and is usually explained by the shortage of other respectable independent options. Support came from endowments, from town councils and from individual bequests, and wills mentioning payments to a named occupant are a standard source.
What they left behind
The most significant consequence for us is literary. Julian of Norwich, enclosed at a church in that city from around 1373, wrote an account of a series of visions and then spent decades revising and reflecting on it, producing what is generally accepted as the earliest surviving book in English written by a woman. A guide written for three sisters entering the life in the early thirteenth century survives in several manuscripts and is a major source for medieval devotional practice and daily detail. Cells themselves survive at a number of English churches, occasionally with the window openings still visible.
The takeaway
Enclosure in a cell against a church wall was permanent, required a bishop's approval and a secure income, and began with a ceremony drawn from the burial service. Two windows connected the occupant to the altar and to the street, where townspeople came for advice. Julian of Norwich wrote from one, producing the earliest surviving book in English by a woman.